


Undertow

by stephanericher



Series: Fins [6]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:29:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: She could stay here; she could feel the water on her skin and not worry about splinters in her feet or makeshift bathtub seas. It’s her home; it always will be.





	Undertow

Alex hasn't been away from home for more than a year before. Strictly speaking, home isn’t one spot with a down payment and a set area of the ocean floor the way it is for humans, but home is the East Pacific, off the coast of Baja California, more or less. She’s gone up north for months at a time alone, all the way to Vancouver at one point, but the push and pull of the current have always guided her back.

She’s spent a few years now in the Sea of Japan and the Pacific on the other side, and a large chunk of that on land, something that had once seemed so foreign and unthinkable but now more or less default. Her great-grandfather had been a fisherman, and as far as anyone knew a hundred percent human, but that seems not to have made adjustment much easier. And adjusting back to the water isn’t even something Alex is aware of, a quick transformation and then all around her, salty water soaks her skin, and then everything is normal and good.

It feels strange to travel so far from Japan, though; going out in the ocean is normal but she’s never too far from the sight of land. The water isn’t deep and the pressure isn’t there, and the sunlight is visible overhead. Japan is so densely-populated and Alex is so used to bumping elbows and sweaty knees, not needing the flimsiest excuses to press up close to Masako, but the middle of the ocean is large. Lonely, a little, though there have been times Alex has missed the emptiness fiercely.

She misses the crowds and the humidity, the rum raisin ice cream dipped in pink salt and a bag of potato chips. She can rip through the skin of a bonefish with her teeth, let the familiar fat and flesh sit on her tongue, infused with saltwater, but it doesn’t taste as much like home as it once did. It’s a strange itch, residing under her skin where she can’t scratch it.

At home, her father and mother are much as she left them. Still quarreling over whose turn it is to gather dinner, still mildly disapproving of how far she’d gone from them, but happy to have her back. And Alex is happy to be there, even if the place doesn’t inhabit her as she felt it always would, a symbiotic living situation.

“You’re not staying, are you?” her mother asks on the third day.

Alex shakes her head, her hair dragging in the water.

“Your dad won’t be happy. I can’t say I am, either, but—it’s your life to live. Just don’t do anything stupid, and come back a little more often.”

Alex smiles. It’s easier to hide tears in the water than on land, and she can’t even place a name to the feeling of why her eyes are welling up from under. Her mother squeezes her hand; it has fewer freckles than Alex’s. When was the last time she surfaced? The question rises to Alex’s lips, but only a bubble of air escapes.

Alex would love to bring Masako home and introduce her to her parents, her extended family, her people; she imagines, somehow, her father speaking of weapons with Masako, Masako’s face trained on her mother’s. Their worlds are asymmetric; there is no way she can reconcile this one home with the other. And it is home, with Masako in Tokyo, not something that had become that way consciously or on purpose, but it’s dragging on her bones now the way the ocean used to when she was onshore, looking out at the ocean a handful of yards away, willing it in her mind to come and wash over her feet and ankles.

She doesn’t feel out of place here, but she feels the distance even now, time too far to bridge back over in an instant. She didn’t volunteer to be tugged on, wrapped in rope and anchors this way or the other, and the only way out now is to struggle through and follow her choice—she has no regrets, only that she can’t have both at once. That’s not a regret, though; it’s not something she has or hasn’t done.

Alex breaks the surface too far away from land on the way back. She can’t see it as she bobs (too far away with her vision), her face unused to the breeze and the foam hitting it. She dives back down, submerging herself again. It feels good to swim the route back, following the sense of direction ingrained in her as a child that will never leave, due west. The water on her tail flows; when she pays attention to it she can feel the salt. It’s so different from the fake saltwater, still and standing in Masako’s old bathtub, a substitute that will work in a pinch but can’t compare, so refreshing.

She could stay here; she could feel the water on her skin and not worry about splinters in her feet or makeshift bathtub seas. It’s her home; it always will be. But the other home is more important; her roots there are not fragile but they need tending right now.

The next time she breaks the surface she’s close; the sun blazes overhead and a cacophony of voices and animals and music rolls over the surface toward her ears. The vibrations reverberate inside of her, a motor spurring her forward and onward, accelerating as she goes. Her clothes are in the crevasse in the rock where she’d left them; she puts them on as she stands in the wet sand at the shoreline, her body regaining its bearings. She hates this balance in the thin air; even when she’s used to it it gets uncomfortable sometimes. Alex closes her eyes and breathes; the smell of salt overwhelms her and she steps forward.

The ice cream stand is as she’d last seen it. Surveying the beach for potential customers, Masako’s leaning slightly forward on the counter. Okamura and Fukui are manning the register; one cumstomer finishes a sugar cone on the last seat. Alex sprints forward, ignoring the hot sand clinging to her feet and flying up to sting her calves. Masako doesn’t see her; Alex is about to shout her name when Masako finally glances her way. She smiles, the heart-stopping kind of soft like a bed of finely-ground sand six feet below the waves.

Masako lifts up the end of the counter and then she’s there in Alex’s arms, the back of her hands sticky from sugar. She smells like strawberries and chocolate and salt; her neck is tanned. Alex kisses it, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I missed you,” Masako says.

“I missed you, too,” says Alex.

She hugs Masako harder; Masako’s hand comes up to pat the back of Alex’s head. A surging wave from the blind side of all the things Alex had missed (Masako’s arms, Masako’s voice, the way she unequivocally voices her feelings first, laying her cards all out—Alex misses it all over again even though Masako’s right here).

  
  



End file.
